


Bitter Work

by ncfan



Series: Fictober 2018 [2]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: (it's a non-linear process), (sort of), Cousins, Fictober 2018, Gen, Handwriting, POV Alternating, POV Female Character, POV Male Character, Relearning How to Write, Trauma, Writing, recovering from trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 20:10:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16204802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: Of course, Maedhros was going to have to learn to write with his left hand. Easier said than done. [Written for Fictober 2018]





	Bitter Work

**Author's Note:**

> [ **CN/TW** : Trauma; the slow, non-linear recovery from trauma; mental health issues]
> 
> Written for the Fictober 2018 prompt, “This is not new, it only feels like it.”

When he hung on the mountainside, his mind had come and gone in cycles, after a while. That did not have anything to do with madness. The mind coming unmoored was something Maitimo had had a horror of at the first, though after a while he began to pray for it, for delusion or delirium would have meant that he was no longer aware of his circumstances, of what was happening to his body. Madness had never come for him, not that kind of madness, and he did not know whether or not to count that as a blessing; either way, the idea that he had ever wished for it was his to know, and his alone.

What had happened was that his mind would cycle back and forth between the present and an imagined future. He would imagine that he had escaped, or had been rescued, and was back among the Ñoldor. He imagined everything he could do when he was gone from this place—every reunion, every act of reconciliation, every act of revenge. The daydreams were sweeter sustenance than the slimy water and moldy bread he was fed, but daydreams were all they were, and though they might have been sweeter on the lips, they did not fill the forever-empty spot in his belly, as it grew wider and wider and became more him than his own mind was him.

Neither were those daydreams at all accurate. Maitimo (the name no longer felt right—it didn’t fit him anymore—and he was trying to decide what would fit him better, but somehow it always circled back to the name his mother had given him) had lived most of his life in the safety of Aman, and lately, he was feeling as keenly as a knife slicing into his flesh (again) how that had blinkered him. He had had no understanding of what certain traumas did to the body, even a body so resilient as a child of the Calaquendi. Perhaps the experience had given him knowledge that would be useful in the future, useful when he dealt with others who had endured similar privation—there would be others; he knew that all too well—but it was little consolation to him.

His strength would return in time. He watched from the mouth of one of the wooden houses hastily erected in his “absence” as one of his brothers mounted a horse and came back hours or sometimes days later with some injury that didn’t seem to concern them as it ought, and told himself that his strength would return in time. When he was not so feeble, when his flesh was again sufficient cover for his bones and the exercise would not tire him too much, he would go to the training yard and finished the needed work to be as strong as he was before. And when that was done, he would…

(The part of himself that still had a foot in Aman thought fantasies of killing and revenge unwise to indulge in. For a start. But if he stifled hatred while he did his work and treated it as a matter of duty, would it really matter that hate flared white-hot through him at other times?

Or maybe it would make him like the Orcs, that hate. But there were times when he felt halfway there already, and if he could scour them from the face of the earth in the process, he wasn’t certain he cared what would become of him after.)

The scars would not fade. The Eldar did not scar easily, and the scars faded quickly from their flesh when they lived at all, but for Maitimo, they would not fade. His body would remain mapped in red lines that would fade to white and never leave. What showed in still water and polished glass and polished metal would never look the same again. What dwelt within the mutilated cage of flesh would never look the same again. So they matched. He could grow accustomed to that. He could stop flinching on sight of his reflection, in time.

His right hand would not grow back.

It was not simply that his body no longer possessed proper balance, that when he stood he forever felt as if he was listing to one side, even though both feet were planted firmly on the ground. He was not whole. That hand had been the price of his freedom, and there was nothing that could have induced him to take it back, if doing so meant he would have to go back to that dry place on Thangorodrim. (The dark nights when he woke up from old dreams expecting to have two hands, well, what those nights inspired could be suppressed by the time Vása crested the mountains.) He was not whole, and would have to wait for the day the imbalance felt like wholeness, if such a moment was ever to arrive.

His right hand would never grow back, and many problems attended that fact. One in particular dogged him.

“This is illegible,” Curufinwë murmured, almost disinterestedly, as if it was a small matter and not something that went straight to the core of his oldest brother. “I’ll need you to tell me what you’ve written as I’m transcribing it.”

“Just don’t tell me your son could have done better,” Maitimo snapped as he moved his chair closer to Curufinwë’s.

Curufinwë made a dry noise in the back of his throat that Maitimo might have taken for a laugh, only there was something missing from it. Some vital element was missing, and it rattled like air in snake skin before dying into silence. “I can’t imagine you’ll never figure it out. You weren’t made to be a man who can’t make sense of what to do with his hand.”

Very smooth, that use of ‘hand.’ Maitimo eyed him, mouth twisting in a frown he couldn’t iron out into neutrality, no matter how he would have liked to, no matter how easy it had been… before. “You think so, do you?” he said slowly. “You’ve seen my handwriting the way it is now. You remember the way it was before.”

Brow furrowed, not looking up from the document whose meaning he was currently trying to puzzle out, Curufinwë made that motion with his shoulders that wasn’t a shrug, but somehow managed to convey all the meaning of a shrug anyways. “Telperinquar’s progress with penmanship has been… uneven. I can hardly imagine it’s any different for you. But if he can eventually learn to write well, I have confidence you will be the same.”

Part of him wanted to take the out. Part of him was grateful that the out had been offered at all. But the gratitude and the sympathy seemed suddenly worm-eaten and festering, a repugnant thing that to so much as touch invited dishonor. A sudden bout of something kin to rage (not rage, not something he had ever been able to _name_ when he felt it, but just as powerful, just as consuming) swelled up in Maitimo’s chest, and he was grabbing clumsily at parchment and pen almost before he knew what was happening. “Watch me.”

Gratitude was swept away completely by the vicious need to make him _see_.

And Curufinwë did watch as Maitimo went through the painstaking process of scratching out letters onto parchment that a small child could have written more legibly, that he might as well never have written at all for how indecipherable they were. Whatever reaction Maitimo had been hoping for, he didn’t get it—at least, the disappointment that writhed in his gut told him that tale. Curufinwë’s eyes darted from the parchment to Maitimo’s face, then back to the parchment again, watching the progress of a shaky hand ineptly grasping the stylus as ink dripped off the tip. His lips thinned. The longer this went on, the thinner they became.

-0-0-0-

Spring had come to Mithrim, but only in patches, so that winter’s snow still lingered on the forest floor and they occasionally woke to a fresh dusting in the mornings. That would melt by midday, but left a stinging bite in the air that had Írissë longing for work that wasn’t so involved that she needed to take off her gloves. Whittling and fletching were tasks that came to her as naturally as breathing, but try as she might, she had never been able to do the tasks with anything between her hands and her tools. Not as well, anyways. That hadn’t been such a large problem in Aman. Írissë hadn’t hated the cold in Aman.

But she needed better light for this work than she could find within the house she shared with Turukáno and Itarillë, so Írissë had taken her tools and materials out onto the “deck,” if they were really going to call the little wooden platform this, and went about her work. The air smelled cleaner outside than within, which was a small mercy. No matter what shutters were opened, what candles were burned, what flowers were gathered, within the house always harbored a stale, musty smell that somehow managed to remind Írissë of an attic no one had bothered to clean out in decades.

A small party had come from the Fëanárian camp earlier this morning, heading straight to the building, somewhat larger than the houses clustered within the palisade, that passed for their government center. (Írissë had heard Turukáno and Findaráto muttering amongst themselves about the need for a proper _tower_ , at least. She personally thought they ought to be grateful that the watch stations were at least raised over the top of the palisade.) In Aman, curiosity would have overcome her immediately, and she would have already been on her feet to go see who led the party and to get what news she could. Now… Well, maybe later. Írissë looked down at the little knife in her hand, and the way her knuckles bled to white. Maybe later.

She turned her mind back to her work, and let it be. It was simple, once you found the rhythm, and Írissë almost didn’t have to think about the steps at all. It was as natural as breathing.

And she didn’t notice at first when a shadow fell over her and her work. She looked up, squinting against the light that spilled out behind the figure, and bit back a sigh when Curufinwë sat down beside her. There was the question of who had led the party answered.

“If you’re going to block part of the light,” she said shortly, “then help me with this.”

“Of course,” Curufinwë murmured, and didn’t even blink when Írissë pushed glue, thread, scissors, and a pile of unfinished arrows his way. “Quite a lot you have here.”

“They’re not just for me. We’re always running short on arrows. Pine’s good for arrow wood, but the pine here’s soft enough that they’re wont to break on impact.”

“That… is a problem.” Curufinwë held an arrowhead close to his face and squinted. “And _this_ is another.” He raised an eyebrow, rolling the unfinished arrow around in his fingers. “ _Stone_ arrowheads? Really?”

Írissë snatched the arrow out of his hand and waved it in his face, glaring lightly. “Yes, _stone_. We’ve found metal ore in the hills, but it’s needed elsewhere.” Her glare deepened. “Especially considering how much we lost just getting here.”

Something happened with Curufinwë’s face that Írissë had not seen in a very long time—he faltered. If she didn’t know him, she wouldn’t have been able to recognize it for what it was, and it lasted but a moment before hiding behind smooth blankness, but it had definitely been there. A crack. “Are you still holding a grudge, then?” he asked her, with a voice as flat as the sky and toneless as an empty plain with no wind rushing across it.

For a moment, Írissë wondered, really wondered, if breaking an unfinished arrow over his head would qualify as some sort of diplomatic incident. Turukáno and Artanis would take her part—Angaráto would take her part _enthusiastically_. Aunt Lalwen would take her part enough to take the edge off of any anger her father might feel over the incident, and really, if her father was angered, it would only have been because of the potential diplomatic repercussions. They were all _well_ past the point of “Hitting your cousin over the head with an arrow is wrong because we are a family and he is younger than you.”

She slapped her whittling knife down on the deck and ran a hand roughly through her hair. “Ask me again in a year,” she said wearily. “Not… not right now.”

“Fair enough.”

They worked in silence, and though Írissë knew she was going to have to check over his work later—she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Curufinwë set his hands to fletching—it wasn’t unpleasant, this. It had been a long time since Írissë had last done this kind of work with a partner. Though the warm body sitting close by her own wasn’t as reliable a heat source as she might have liked.

Írissë couldn’t have said how long it was that they worked in silence like that. In addition to being as natural as breathing, the work of whittling and fletching new arrows was meditative, and Írissë cared less about how time passed when she did it. Clouds gathered, turning the pale blue sky a pallid whitish-gray that still managed to hurt to look at—Vása suffused the banks of vapor with its light. The little pile of finished arrows slowly grew larger, and larger.

“So…” Írissë examined an arrow shaft with a critical gaze, balancing it in her hand. “What brings you here? I can’t imagine you made the trip casually, considering the perils in your path.”

“You know me well,” he said smoothly. “We needed to speak with your father about arrangements for scouting the Ered Wethrin and further east. It _is_ supposed to be a joint venture, even if the camps are…” His voice turned a touch delicate. “…Somewhat at cross-purposes.”

Because saying “figuratively at each other’s throats and one wrong move from being there literally” wasn’t the best thing to say, even to someone as disinterested in politicking as Írissë. Ah, but she was picking up some things. Leadership was never something she had looked for in Aman, even as the princes of the Ñoldor were jockeying for power and position, but in Beleriand it had found her anyways, and duty was not so easily shirked as the desire for power was scorned.

Írissë made a noncommittal noise in her throat as the enticing idea of scouting and maybe mapping lands no Calaquendë had ever seen danced in her mind. She would not ask. After everything, the idea of asking, or even begging, that rankled. _Ask me again in a year, indeed. I won’t be able to sort out my feelings any better in a year_.

It would be nice if the same people she played with as a child and whose confidante she was into adulthood had not betrayed them. Or it would be nice if they were not close kin, once close friends. It would be nice if she could bring herself to forget, could sever links in her heart like Curufinwë was snipping through the thread with his borrowed scissors, even now.

“And what of you, cousin? How do you spend your time?” He smiled slyly, as if sharing a secret and not something anyone who knew Írissë knew of her. “I can’t imagine such work as this is enough to satisfy you.”

“You know me well,” she echoed. “I have many duties, the same as anyone else. I spend much of my time… hunting.”

There came the tap, tap, tapping of a fingernail against wood. “What prey do you hunt?”

She sighed bitterly. “That… is the question, isn’t it? Because there is certainly more than game to be hunting. I hunt, Curufinwë. I take parties into the forests and we hunt. All hunting comes with an element of risk—even something as simple as turning your ankle while setting a rabbit trap.”

And according to her father, entirely too much risk for her to contend with, though after the shouting was said and done, he didn’t try to stop her. There was too much to do for Ñolofinwë to force his daughter’s hands to stay idle, and Írissë _was_ a very good hunter.

Curufinwë sighed suddenly, squeezing his pale eyes shut before opening them again, a line creasing between his eyebrows. “The arrangements for scouting… are not the only reason I’m here, Írissë. And…” He paused, frowning, though more at the ground than at her. “…If it matters at all to you, I am sorry to impose on you when there are still ill feelings between us, but I have a rather large favor to ask of you.” He sighed heavily. “Two, if I’m being honest. I could have asked someone else, but I would much rather this was kept within the family, and that it was done so discreetly.”

-0-0-0-

Írissë had many notions of the world and the forces at work within it that had found themselves shattered or otherwise challenged of late. An upheaval like _everything_ that had precipitated and constituted the Exiles’ exit from Aman tended to do that.

She no longer took for granted that the light that graced the world would be there forever. She had watched Light die. She had felt the Darkness that overthrew and devoured overthrow her and try to devour _everything_.

When Laurelin and Telperion still cast their light in Aman, Írissë had never been overly concerned about the Valar. She’d never devoted an excess of thought as to whether she regarded them as benevolent or not-so-benevolent, caring or stifling. She had other things she cared about far more, and she was no theologian. She’d let certain other members of her family have those arguments. But she had opinions now, so entrenched that it was hard to remember, sometimes, that there had been a time when she didn’t care.

When Írissë was young, she had had in her head fixed ideas about her kin that she had never imagined would be disproven or even challenged. She had certainly never gone looking for things that could disprove her assumptions. Her parents were her parents—her father great and valiant, her mother rigid and high-strung, but never dishonorable. Her grandmother, Indis, was everything proper and decorous, but when it came to stories of her past in Endóre, she was much more likely to tell the truth than her husband, and thus satisfy the longings of a grandchild who, quite frankly, was looking for _gory_ tales, not tales of perseverance. Arafinwë preferred the company of the Falmari to the Ñoldor, and spent much of his time in Alqualondë. Findis was quiet, unflappable, and utterly apolitical, much more interested in her tapestries than in politicking.

And Maitimo, already full-grown by the time Írissë was born, was her poised, well-put-together eldest cousin, impervious to any kind of misfortune. Even as the unrest that had gripped the Ñoldor in Aman reached a fever pitch, he still somehow managed to be reasonably well-liked by all factions—any animus against him had germinated after Alqualondë, and sprouted after Losgar. He had just seemed untouchable, somehow. Even in debates he lost he managed to retain his dignity. He’d walked away from the Kinslaying without a scratch on him, one of the only ones who could claim such. Good-looking and gracious and untouchable was what he had been, for as long as Írissë had known him.

It likely does not surprise you, then, that the state Maitimo had been in after Findekáno retrieved him from Angband had been a nasty shock to Írissë’s pre-conceived notions. She’d pushed the shock aside quickly enough when she was called upon to help with his care, but all she had ever been able to do was keep the shock from ruling her. She’d never been able to extinguish it, and it still came back to her at odd moments.

Like now, when she was laying eyes on him for the first time in months.

The houses in the Fëanárian encampment had been hastily erected, and then never replaced with sturdier construction; there was a noticeable draft in this one that Írissë could only suppose the glowing brazier standing near the table was meant to ward off. It didn’t do the job—she had no intention of taking off her thick, fur-lined cloak—but Maitimo did not seem to notice the cold. The gift, Írissë thought bitterly, of not having to cross the Helcaraxë.

He didn’t notice the cold, and he didn’t notice her, standing at the threshold of the room he seemed to have claimed as a study, if the stacks of books and parchment and the presence of a wax seal ( _not_ Fëanáro’s, Írissë noted) were any indication. That did give Írissë some time to look him over.

Her first thought was that Maitimo still looked entirely too thin, the shape of his skull still visible under his skin if you looked closely. Even those who had suffered most horribly on the Helcaraxë, and yet lived, had recovered more quickly than this, once they were able to eat their fill again. His hair had been a filthy, tangled nest of lice by the time Findekáno had found him, and the doctors had seen nothing to do but shave it all away; it had grown back in finer, straighter, and somewhat thinner than it had been before, and hung limply around his jaw, gleaming as if wet.

The scars were… Írissë winced on sight of them, though they were nothing new, and no new scars had been added to their number since she last saw him. The scars were like someone had taken a chisel to a finished sculpture and scored and hacked, and maybe that was why Írissë winced; she was no stranger to violence, but that particularly needless violence, just the sight of it, was about as comfortable to look at as it was to rub steel wool against bare skin. The Orcs had played with their food before eating it. Children of the Eldar were not made to be the playthings of beasts.

The hand…

Well, the hand was why she was here.

At last (he should have realized she was here by now; _would_ have realized, before all of this), Írissë rapped her knuckles against the doorframe and cleared her throat.

Maitimo dragged his eyes away from the sheet of parchment on the table in front of him (mostly blank, and the writing that was there could scarcely be called writing), and looked up. His face was incomplete. Írissë didn’t mean the scars that shot back and forth lividly across his skin, or the visible notch in his left ear. What was missing went deeper than the skin, and she had no name for it, couldn’t identify it. She tried to ignore it.

“Írissë,” he said, not awkwardly; that command of voice had not been taken from him, at least. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

 _I_ sincerely _hope we aren’t going to get a messenger from your father, demanding to know where you are and demanding you come home_ , went unsaid but clearly heard, and it was all Írissë could do not to bristle. “I am here—“ and she was, she’d admit, a little proud of how smoothly her voice gave out the words “—to assist with the scouting of the eastern reaches of the Ered Wethrin.”

Maitimo raised an eyebrow. “That isn’t scheduled to begin for another month.”

She shrugged. “Your stretch of forest is in need of another hunter who can hunt more than just game, or so I’m told. I’m also here about your handwriting.”

This engendered only a blank, “What?”

Írissë shrugged again. “Curufinwë asked me. Said the only other left-handed person in our family was Itarillë and that Turukáno would never let her come, which is completely true, if we’re being fair.” She waved a hand, almost—not quite—dismissively. “Curufinwë now, by his own admission, owes me two large favors. I haven’t decided what they’re going to be yet. Do you know, he can beg quite prettily when he’s desperate?”

Maitimo’s jaw worked silently all while Írissë was speaking, coal-gray eyes darting over her face. He drew in a deep breath, visibly working to steady himself. “Thank you for your concern, cousin.” Rather less grateful than Curufinwë had sounded, to be honest, though there was nothing in it that she could have called objectionable. “But I do not need your help in this.”

“Curvo showed me a _sample_ ,” Írissë replied flatly. “You need my help.”

Later, Írissë would never be able to tell if the grappling silence that followed as Maitimo genuinely trying to puzzle out whether he wanted her help, or just deciding whether or not to swallow his pride and accept it. Either way, the end result was the same. Maitimo sighed in exasperation and gestured to the chair on his right. “I suppose I have no choice, then. I still think there’s nothing for it but to keep trying, though. I don’t know how much help you can be with _that_.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

She sat down at the table, and as she did so, it fell on her all at once that she had never actually taught someone to write before. The only things she had ever taught other people were how to hunt with a bow, and how to stab and parry with a knife, and these she had never done with what could truly be called _ease_. She had done it because it was a matter of duty, and because if she did not teach them to keep themselves safe, who would?

This was rather different.

Something else Írissë had noticed earlier, before Maitimo had been moved back to his own camp, was that his travails seemed to have significantly eroded his patience. His own weakness had stoked his anger entirely too easily, and when it was not directed inwards, it was expressed in snarls and snapping at the ones who tried to care for him. When they had to trim the ragged flesh around Findekáno’s hasty, clumsy essay at amputation (he’d never been very good at it, though Írissë couldn’t bring herself to criticize his work too harshly in this case), Maitimo had sworn at the surgeon and barely spoken to her and her eldest brother for days afterwards.

There was no trace of that impatience as Maitimo stared expectantly at her, though Írissë could not tell whether to attribute that to a real improvement in his state of mind, or a temporary calm brought on by the certainty that she would fail. She had a suspicion about it, and knew it was her own stubbornness that kept her from addressing it. “Try and write the alphabet first,” she tried at last.

She watched, brow furrowing deeper and deeper, as her cousin did as instructed. She watched how unsteadily he grasped the gleaming steel pen in his scarred hand, watched the way his shoulders stiffened and his jaw clenched under scrutiny. Watched what was supposed to be letters of the Tengwar materialize in blotches of ink flowing at times too generously and at others nearly not at all. Watched until he was done, so much longer than it would have taken him with his right hand.

After finishing, he simply pushed the parchment towards her, saying nothing. Írissë took the parchment in her hands to examine it, biting back a sigh as she did so.

A closer examination only confirmed her initial impressions: Maitimo’s handwriting was wholly illegible. Well, maybe not _wholly_. She could make out a couple of letters if she concentrated—really, _really_ concentrated. But it wasn’t what it had once been, and wasn’t acceptable for an adult. Wasn’t acceptable for his own pride, either, if she had to guess.

“I suppose it goes without saying that you _have_ been trying to learn how to write with your left hand.”

With just the slightest bite of impatience, “Since I was strong enough to pick up a pen again, yes.”

“It’s… rather bad.”

“I know that! I have _eyes_ , Írissë.” His face contorted in a twisting of something like rage, something like disgust turned inwards. “And unlike other parts of me, I still have them both.”

Whatever retort was on her tongue, Írissë forced it down without examining it for its content. _This isn’t helping. Think. What goes in to teaching someone how to write?_

Írissë picked up the steel pen Maitimo had discarded, rolling it in her hand before proffering it to him. “Show me again,” she said, more softly, “how you’re holding the pen.” There had been something odd about it before, though Írissë had been paying less attention to that than she had the quality of the letters themselves.

He visibly held back some sort of complaint, only clicking his tongue as he took the pen and obliged her on that point. “How’s this?”

“Well…” Írissë scanned the desk for another pen, finally finding one half-buried under a stack of papers. “The way you’re gripping the pen is… Well, it looks like you’re trying to stab the parchment.”

A startled huff of a laugh jarred from his mouth. “Does it?”

“Very much so, yes. Look at the way I’m holding this pen, and try to copy me.”

A grimace stole over Maitimo’s face as he craned his neck to get a closer look at the pen in Írissë’s hand, and the position of her hand itself. “Does everyone who writes with their left hand curve their wrist like that?” he muttered, almost to himself.

It was a question, though, and Írissë could only tilt her head to one side as she looked down at her hand. “I’m… not certain, really. I’ve never really paid close attention to the way other left-handed people hold their pens or quills. Just… Write the alphabet again, and try to maintain that hand position as you do so.”

Shaky work it was, and the lines that etched into Maitimo’s face as he wrote spoke more eloquently of discomfort than words ever could have. Írissë could vaguely remember the painstaking process of learning to write as a child, her parents’ frustrated attempts and faulty instructions before they had finally given up and found a left-handed tutor for her, and she winced reflexively. _We’re both adults, and it’s hardly as if he doesn’t know how to write—he just has to learn how to write with his off hand. It won’t be that bad. I hope._

The finished work was… It was definitely an improvement, or at least it had been until about three-quarters of the way through, when Maitimo had (unconsciously, Írissë was certain) slipped back into how he had been holding the pen before, and the handwriting became well and truly illegible again. The first three-quarters were mostly legible, though not easily so, and the letters had no neatness or sophistication to them. Maitimo was glaring down at the parchment as though willing it to burst into flames. Definitely not up to his standards, then.

Írissë didn’t bother to restrain her sigh when she thought about how much ink they were going to go through.

-0-0-0-

The last two weeks had somehow managed to be even more of an exercise in frustration and the struggle to keep his temper in check than the past several months, going on a year, had been. It would have been nice, Maitimo thought to himself, if he was yet strong enough to hold a sword and hack away at a dummy on the training yard, or take his frustration out on a wooden post, or to at least have _something_ to do with it that wasn’t just forcing it down. But though the spirit was ready to fight again, the body was slow to follow. If he did not wish to alienate his kin and his followers, there was nothing to do but swallow that frustration and let it burn, sputter, and die out in his gut.

Írissë’s manner of “teaching” involved stepping into his study for anywhere from half an hour to an hour every day—well, not _every_ day—and mostly just trying to correct his grip without being able to offer an in-depth explanation of what he was supposed to be doing differently, just presenting her own grip as a model. And there were the alphabet drills. Over and over again.

Perhaps he was being unfair. Írissë had been good as her word when she had given the “official” purpose for her presence in this camp, up until the day the scouting of the eastern reaches of the Ered Wethrin were to begin. Not a day went by that she wasn’t heading out with a hunting party into the dense forests surrounding the camp. There was more than just game to be hunting in the forest, and more than once she’d come in twitchy and jumpy and smelling of blood.

(This did little for his frustration, though it did wonders for convincing him to turn it inwards rather than out. He should have been strong enough to ride out with the hunting parties when he did not have duties elsewhere. He should have been strong enough to ride out with them and keep them safe, help them keep the Eldar safe. But the body rebelled against the mind’s desires, and was not strong enough yet to stay on horseback for more than a few minutes at a time. That was better than a couple of months ago, but it still stung.)

This was not…

He was scratching out letters in his dreams. At first, they were perfect, and he could actually find some measure of happiness that he… He couldn’t remember the last time. He had stopped trying. He was writing as well with his left hand as he ever had with his right, and there was a sense of rightness to the world and to his body that had been lacking ever since he was dragged in chains to Angband.

But what flowed out of his pen did not remain legible for long; it never did. The letters writhed and twisted like snakes on the parchment, forming first the shapes of distorted letters, words so poorly-written that their meaning could not have been discerned even by one with such powers as the Ainur. Then, they contorted even further, so that they were no longer recognizable as language, and the final insult: fading into nothing, stripping even the memory of his efforts from the parchment.

His hand dragged across the page, smearing the ink as he wrote, so that even if the handwriting had been perfectly neat and regular, it would have been garbled by the time he was done. To that, Írissë counseled patience and slower writing to give the ink more time to dry. That didn’t help. Holding his hand over the page while he wrote didn’t help—it just made his wrist ache, and the ink somehow wound up smudged anyways. They were going through parchment at an alarming speed. They were going through ink at nearly as alarming a speed. He had little to nothing to show for it.

And on occasions when Írissë was able to spend time trying to “instruct” him (Maitimo was no longer certain he could apply the full measure of the word to what she was doing, not least because of how visibly ill at ease she was), it seemed they couldn’t go five minutes without some kind of interruption.

News from messengers and scouts, someone coming in to tell Maitimo about a problem in the encampment, that was all very standard. While he couldn’t say he was _happy_ , it was nothing unusual, and he could greet this particular brand of interruption with some measure of equanimity. It was when the interruptions came from his own family that they became more difficult to tolerate.

If he had been thinking about it, he would have realized at the outset that it was inevitable. When, in Aman, half the House of Finwë was barely on speaking terms with the other half, Írissë had been one of the designated go-betweens, and that was precisely because she was one of the few members of their extended family who could claim to be on good terms with all of her relatives. That included Maitimo’s brothers, and Maitimo himself.

Curufinwë limited himself to errand-running and fetch-and-carry, and if Telperinquar hadn’t turned up wanting to visit with his “aunt,” Maitimo suspected his father had more than a little to do with that. Tyelkormo was skittish as a fawn about Írissë, and Írissë decidedly cool with him, which was perplexing (well, Tyelkormo’s skittishness was perplexing; unfortunately, Maitimo didn’t need to wonder at Írissë’s coolness), but useful. Huan simply came in, laid his head on Írissë’s lap and was still—it was easy to forget he was there at all. The other four were not being so accommodating.

Kano at least had the sense to clear out when Maitimo glared at him. The Ambarussa were very good at ignoring the signals of fraternal irritation, and Carnistir just didn’t care. They wanted to catch up with their cousin, and either didn’t realize or didn’t care that she wasn’t there to socialize. That Írissë didn’t seem too interested in socializing when she was in this house didn’t seem to register with them, either.

It was after a barked shout sent Telvo skittering from the room that Írissë finally took the step of locking all the doors into the room. Since shut didn’t seem to be enough by itself to deter them.

“I wouldn’t count on that,” Maitimo grumbled, shooting a jaundiced stare at the last lock Írissë had secured. “Telpe’s getting to be very good at picking locks, and I wouldn’t put it past one of his uncles to enlist his aid.”

“Hmm.” Írissë frowned thoughtfully. “I’ll have to keep that in mind. I’ve never had much skill with lock-picking, and you never know when you’ll need a lock picked.” At Maitimo’s warning glare, she added, “ _Really_.”

“Why you would need to pick locks _here_ is beyond me.”

“Just thinking about the future. I don’t like the idea that I might wind up trapped somewhere, but I can’t discount it out of hand.” She shrugged uneasily. “It features in too many of my nightmares to discount it.”

The sight of her warming her hands by the brazier filled Maitimo with a sudden, confused mess of frustration and shame. He couldn’t have said where either came from, or why they chose to rear their heads now. When she told him to try the alphabet again, he did so without complaint, hoping it would be enough to make the feeling go away.

It wasn’t what it should have been. It never was, and Maitimo couldn’t see how it ever would be. _He_ wasn’t what he should be. The most vital parts of him were missing, and his right hand was the least of it. He couldn’t be what he should be, and no work of his would ever be what it should be again.

“Useless,” he muttered, staring down at scribbles a child could have written more legibly.

“It’s not useless,” Írissë said, voice about as relaxed as a bowstring pulled taut. “You need to be able to write more legibly. What are people going to think of a prince whose handwriting is so bad that no one can read it?”

The suggestion of having someone dictate his letters died on his lips. Maitimo had never thought much of that practice. Given that it didn’t even occur to her to suggest it now, Írissë didn’t seem to think much of it, either. Why delegate it to someone else when you can do it yourself?

“Írissë…” He took a deep breath, tried to steady himself. Of all the people to drive away, the one who was trying to help him, even though she had no obligation to and no one would have blamed her for refusing, even if she wasn’t very good at it… He needed to stay calm. What he needed was proof for himself that he could still hold his temper in check, that Angband had no taken that much from him. “I have been trying for months now to learn how to write legibly, and this—“ he gesticulated at the writing on the parchment before him, little better than a toddler’s scribbles “—is the best I have been able to produce. What would you have me _do_?”

“You’ve only known how to hold the pen properly for two weeks,” Írissë argued, “and you’re still getting a handle on that. Let me show you how _I_ write, if you don’t believe it’s possible for you to do any better.”

And she wrote out the alphabet, then, the first time she had done so. Maitimo couldn’t actually remember the last time he had seen an example of Írissë’s handwriting. She certainly had much greater ease with the pen than he currently possessed, writing quickly and fluidly (and somehow managing to smear the ink considerably less than he did, though there were still smudges on the page and on her hand when she was done), but the more he watched, the more it occurred to him what an oversight it had been not to get a sample of her handwriting before all of this had begun.

“Írissë…” He looked at the finished product, and honestly wanted to scream, just a little. “Your handwriting…”

“Is not especially pretty, I know.” As if that was ample description for the uneven scrawl she had produced. “But the difference is that people can read my handwriting without difficulty.”

It was needlessly combative. It was immature. It was thoroughly unfitting of the head of his house to say something like that, if only because he wasn’t a child and ought to be able to exert more control over his tongue. And it flowed from his mouth like water, every levy and dam insufficient to hold it back: “And _this_ is the best that I can hope for?” Maitimo demanded, plucking the parchment out of her grasp and slapping it down on the table. “This is nothing to what I was once capable of.”

Írissë’s face darkened. “I _never_ said that this was the best you could hope for,” she hissed. “I don’t believe I _implied_ it. The identity of your tutor has little bearing on how good or bad your handwriting is if you put real effort into the attempt. If you keep trying, your handwriting can still improve. Maybe it won’t be as fine as it was when you still had the other hand to write with, but just because that’s true doesn’t mean you should give up.”

“I have been trying for what feels like an eternity; time slips away into the abyss when staring down your own failure. This…” A sharp, hissing breath. “…This is absolutely _pointless_. The pen doesn’t feel right in my left hand. _Nothing_ feels right in my left hand. I still catch myself reaching for things with my right, and it’s not until I feel the _stub_ hitting the table that I remember why I _can’t_ anymore. How am I to bear that? How am I _ever_ to use my left hand as though it is natural, as though it is the only way I have ever lived?”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he felt ashamed. Like a child whining over some minor misfortune, though he knew logically that the loss of a hand—that everything that had happened to him—went far beyond a minor misfortune. Among many other things, he ought to be better than this. He ought to be able to keep the words in his head, ought to be able to find calmness. But he felt like there was a fissure opening wide inside of him, opening further all the time, and everything that was him was pouring into it, beyond reach, and when he was empty, what would be left?

Írissë’s face contorted. The way her eyes flashed, Maitimo actually found himself flinching at the sight of it (oh, how things had changed), but she drew a shuddering breath, and looked weary, and small. “This is not new,” she said quietly. She reached out and up, put a hand on his shoulder, hand tensed, though not, as far as Maitimo could tell, wary. “This is not new. It only feels like it is. You learned how to write before, when you were a child, and it can’t have always been easy.

“You’re going to have to learn how to use your left hand to fight with a dagger and a sword. I know you’re not strong enough for that yet, but it’s going to happen; we both know it is. And I _know_ that with that you won’t relent until you can fight as well with the left hand as you ever did with the right.” She raised an eyebrow, almost smiled, but stopped herself at just a rueful twitch of her lips. “I like to think I know you better than to believe that you’d give up on that. And it will be bitter work, bitterer by far than this, but you’ll still do it. So why is this different?” she asked softly.

And because he knew the doors were locked, knew there was no one waiting on the other side, knew she would never tell anyone: “I don’t know. It just is.”

Írissë was silent, her mouth slowing turning downwards in an expression that had the quality of a frown, but none of the energy required for one. Slowly, she reached over across the table, and picked up a discarded pen. When she held it out to him, he took it, and they started again. They didn’t need to say anything. They already knew the essence of bitter work.

**Author's Note:**

> Maitimo—Maedhros  
> Curufinwë, Curvo—Curufin  
> Telperinquar, Telpe—Celebrimbor  
> Írissë—Aredhel  
> Turukáno—Turgon  
> Itarillë—Idril  
> Findaráto—Finrod  
> Artanis—Galadriel  
> Angaráto—Angrod  
> Ñolofinwë—Fingolfin  
> Arafinwë—Finarfin  
> Findekáno—Fingon  
> Fëanáro—Fëanor  
> Tyelkormo—Celegorm  
> Kano—Maglor  
> Ambarussa—Amrod and Amras  
> Carnistir—Caranthir  
> Telvo—Amras
> 
>  **Calaquendi** —“Elves of the Light”; the Elves who came to Aman from Cuiviénen, or were born there, especially those born during the Years of the Trees and had born witness to their light; the Vanyar, the Ñoldor, and the Falmari (singular: Calaquendë) (Quenya)  
>  **Eldar** —‘People of the Stars’ (Quenya); a name first given to the Elves by Oromë when he found them by Cuiviénen, but later came to refer only to those who answered the summons to Aman and set out on the March, with those who chose to remain by Cuiviénen coming to be known as the Avari; the Eldar were composed of these groups: the Vanyar, Ñoldor (those among them who chose to go to Aman), and the Teleri (including their divisions: the Lindar, Falmari, Sindar and Nandor).  
>  **Endóre** —Middle-Earth (Quenya)  
>  **Ered Wethrin** —‘Mountains of Shadow’ (Sindarin); a mountain range in northern Beleriand in the first age. The Ered Wethrin formed a border around Hithlum, separating it from the Anfauglith to the east, Nevrast to the southwest, and western Beleriand to the south.  
>  **Falmari** —those among the Teleri who completed the journey to Aman; the name is derived from the Quenya falma, '[crested] wave.'  
>  **Helcaraxë** —the Grinding Ice (Quenya); the bridge of ice between Araman and Middle-Earth in the far north of the world. Morgoth and Ungoliant escaped to Middle-Earth by this road after destroying the Two Trees. Later, after the burning of the ships at Losgar, the Ñoldorin exiles abandoned on the other side of the sea traveled to Middle-Earth by this road at great risk to themselves.  
>  **Vása** —a name given to the Sun by the Ñoldor, signifying ‘The Consumer’ (Exilic Quenya); of the Sun and the Moon, it is the younger of the two vessels, lit by Laurelin’s last fruit


End file.
